“In this bag, among other things, you’ll find a nurse’s uniform,” Durkin went on hurriedly, oblivious of her scrutiny. “It will fit a little loose, I’m afraid—Miss Seabrooke is a big, wide-shouldered Canadian girl. And in forty or fifty minutes from now you ought to be inside that uniform and inside the Van Schaick house—if we ever want to carry this thing through!” “And then—?” she asked, in her dead and impersonal voice, as though her thoughts were leagues away. “Then,” cried Durkin, “then you’ve got to get hold of a glove-box in Miss Lydia Van Schaick’s chiffonier drawer. By some means or other we’ve got to get hold of that box, and—” She stopped him, by holding up a sudden silencing hand. Her face was white and set; he could see none of the iris of her eyes. “It’s no use!” she said, evenly and quietly. “It’s no use. I can not and will not do it!” Durkin fell back from her, aghast. Then he took her by the arm, and turned her about so that the light fell on her face. He could see that her lower lip was trembling. “You back down—_now_?” he demanded, with a touch of incredulity. “Yes, I back down!” she answered, letting her eyes meet his. “Why—” he began, inadequately. “What is it?” “It’s simply this, Jim,” she answered him—and her voice, now, was high and thin and unmodulated, constricted, by some inward tension, to a gramophonic tumult of syllables. “There has got to be a limit, somewhere. At some point we have got to draw the line. We have been forgetting a great many things. But I can not and will not be a common thief—for you—or for anything you can bring to me—or to my life!” “You say _that_?” “Yes, I do; and if you cared for me—if you thought of my feelings—if you thought of my happiness, you would never ask me to do such things—you would never make me suffer like this!” He threw up his hands with what was almost a gesture of exasperation. “But you will _not_ be a common thief—it will not be stealing at all! Can’t you see that?” “No, I can not. And you know as well as I know, that when we try to justify it we do it only by a quibble!” “But I tell you every penny of that money will go back where it came from!” “Then why can’t we go to Lydia Van Schaick and ask her to lend us the money?” “That’s ridiculous!” “No more so than what you propose!” Durkin, drawing back from her, closed his right fist and with it pounded angrily on the palm of his left hand. “If you’re going to back down I _will_ go to Lydia Van Schaick, and I’ll get her money, too. I’ll go as a second-story man, as a porch-climber! I’ll go after that money as a common burglar and house-breaker. But I’ll get it, in the end, or know the reason why!” “Oh!” she gasped, horrified. “You wouldn’t! You couldn’t!” “I say I will!” he cried, in a passion. “Oh, you couldn’t!” she reiterated. “Couldn’t I?—I’ve got this machinery started, and it’s going to be kept moving!”